How To: Make Friends

So on Sunday, when I may or may not have been very hung over (the jury’s still out on that), I met Barton and Rachel at Centennial Park. They brought Rachel’s dog, a GeneriDog puppy named Emmet, and I brought my dog, a furry cocktail weiny named Chloe. That’s her on the right, on one of her good days.

I was kind of concerned about this, since Chloe doesn’t usually make friends with other dogs. When she first traipsed into my family’s life, I brought her over to The Across the Street Starbucks. At this time, there was an older guy who was a regular there, and he had a big, friendly, white dog that looked kind of like a husky. He brought his dog over, the two dogs sniffed, and Chloe morphed from a happy, Dug sort of behavior to a snarling I-Will-Shank-You convict. Her face contorted into a demon’s, and the growl was terrifying.

The man and his dog retreated, I apologized, and Chloe calmed down and reverted to her attention-seeking normal self. Since then, I’ve figured out that she only likes dogs she can dominate. To wit, her “friends” are a miniature dachshund, a Jack Russel Terrier slightly smaller than herself, and a… dog named Hot Dog that seems to be oblivious to most things around it.

So I got the call Sunday afternoon when I was sitting around watching a discussion about U.S. – China relations (because I am a nerd of gargantuan proportions), and was a bit weary. But, I figured, I needed to get out of the house, and this was a good excuse to do so.

So Chloe and I left, went to the park, and met up with the three of them. Emmet, the GeneriDog, immediately submitted to the terror of Chloe–a dog who, if you don’t remember, looks like this:

Ten minutes later, Chloe was ignoring Emmet, and the latter was walking around chewing sticks and plastic bottle caps.

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Ophiuchus, the Bird Killer

As you are no doubt aware, there is a new star sign: Ophiuchus.

My concern, as I’m sure is yours, is not what those born into this sign resemble in terms of character traits, but the various effects this new sign has on our world.

After hacking into JSTOR using a borrowed e-mail account and password (sorry James), I decided that I’d take up my mantle as Aaron Simon, Investigative Faux-Journalist, and have a looksie into what this portends.

The Babylonians

According to an article by an astronomy professor who was ousted from his chair at Oxford in 1965 on dubious charges (according to his autobiography published in We Have Funding For This Quarterly), the discovery of a new astrological sign has, in past cultures, signaled their decline.

For example, or so Dr. Wilhelm Desjackston states in his article, “The Death of Societies – BY STARS!” the Babylonians’ horoscopes only consisted of eleven astrological signs. And then, as time marched inexorably forward, so, too, did the first astrologers, the Astrologiarians, as they called themselves, decreed that there would be another sign added to their horoscope wheel. Soon after, as we all know, HaShem struck down the Tower of Babylon, the empire was destroyed, and the Romans took over their land.

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Complaining is verbohten.

After seeing this story, I’ve realized that I complain about stuff too much. And the things about which I complain are so minuscule and unimportant that, after reading about a guy who spent 30 years in jail (in Texas, of course–TEXAS REPRESENT!), I think back on everything and think, “I am a schmuck.”

For example, this morning after finishing the workload on my desk, I embarked on a netwide hunt to try and speed up Angry Birds. This started me thinking about how it sucked that I was on Virgin Mobile and they hadn’t rolled out the FroYo update on my phone yet. Then I started thinking about how it sucked that I wasn’t making enough money to have my own plan on Verizon after paying all the bills and yadda yadda.

It’s easy to look at that paragraph and think that I’m a materialistic schlub, as no doubt some of you (read: all one reader) have thought. However, think about how many times you wished your iPhone or car or computer or whatever was faster. Then, think about how much you’d rather have a slow gadget than spend 30 years in jail in Texas after being wrongfully convicted of rape.

Yep. Puts it in perspective.